UC-NRLF 


BT 


HISTORY  AND  THEOLOGY 


Delivered     before     the     Presbyterian     Ministers? 

Association    of   Philadelphia 

on  April  2$th,  1898 


"BY  THE  • 
REV.  ARTHUR  CUSHMAN  McGIFFERT,  Ph.D.,  D.D., 

Washburn  Professor  of  Church  History 
in  the  Union  Theological  Seminary  in  New  York 


HISTORY  AND  THEQ.LQGY.  . , : 


MR.  PRESIDENT  AND  BRETHREN: 

It  is  my  privilege  to  be  a  student  of  Church 
History,  and  it  will  not  cause  surprise,  I  am  sure, 
nor  will  it  be  deemed  out  of  place  if  I  improve  the 
opportunity  afforded  by  your  courteous  invitation 
to  address  you  upon  a  subject  suggested  by  my 
chosen  line  of  work.  I  do  not  propose  to  bring 
before  you  any  particular  movement  or  person  or 
period.  It  is  my  desire  rather  to  speak  on  a  more 
general  question  connected  with  the  nature  of 
Church  History,  a  preliminary  question  of  principle 
and  method,  the  bearing  of  which,  I  believe,  needs 
to  be  generally  understood  before  Church  History 
can  assert  its  true  place  and  accomplish  its  best 
work.  That  question  concerns  the  relation  of 
History  and  Theology,  or  more  precisely  of  Histor- 
ical Theology  and  Dogmatic  Theology.  The  theme 
of  my  address,  therefore,  may  be  stated  in  somewhat 
vague  and  general  terms,  but  with  sufficient  accu- 
racy for  all  practical  purposes,  as 

HISTORY  AND  THEOLOGY. 

One  whose  attention  has  been  called  to  it,  can 
hardly  fail  to  be  impressed,  as  he  reads  the  older 
books  on  Church  History,  with  the  fact  that  the 


M114S246 


distinction  between  two  time-honored  and  im- 
portant xbrartches  of  theological  study,  Church 
History  -  and  "Dogmatic  Theology,  has  not  been 
\  always  /clearly  -apprehended  or  fully  understood. 
It  would  seem  at  first  glance  as  if  they  were  suffi- 
ciently unlike  to  insure  their  being  kept  separate 
and  distinct,  and  of  course,  so  far  as  Church  History 
deals  with  mere  external  events  and  movements, 
there  is  comparatively  little  reason  to  fear  for  its 
independence  and  integrity  as  a  theological  dis- 
cipline. But  when  it  comes  to  the  realm  of  thought 
or  doctrine,  a  realm  which  constitutes  a  very  large 
part  of  the  domain  of  Church  History,  the  past  has 
shown  that  there  is  decided  danger  that  the  history 
will  lose  its  real  character  and  take  on  more  or  less" 
of  the  aspect  of  Dogmatic  Theology  to  the  serious 
detriment  of  all  the  interests  involved.  Every  one 
will  admit  that  there  is  a  difference  between  the 
history  of  theology  and  Systematic  or  Dogmatic 
Theology,  but  it  is  clear  enough  that  there  is  more 
or  less  uncertainty  as  to  what  that  difference  is. 
And  though  few  would  deny  abstractly  that  it  is  one 
thing  to  study  theology  as  an  historian,  and  another 
thing  to  study  it  as  a  dogmatician,  as  a  matter  of 
fact  a  great  many  look  for  the  same  results  from 
the  investigations  of  both,  and  if  they  do  not  demand 
that  the  dogmatician  shall  be  an  historian,  do  demand 
at  any  rate  that  the  historian  shall  be  a  dogmatician.. 
And  this  common  misconception  is  shared  fre- 
quently even  by  students  of  history  and  of  dog- 
matics, so  that  the  confusion  of  the  two  disciplines 


5 

is  promoted  by  the  very  persons  who  should  do 
most  to  dispel  it.  If  it  were  merely  a  question  of 
form  or  of  nomenclature,  it  would  be  a  compara- 
tively unimportant  matter,  and  I  certainly  should 
not  consume  time  in  discussing  it  this  morning,  but 
it  is  a  much  more  serious  matter  than  appears  at 
first  sight;  so  serious  that  it  demands,  it  seems  to 
me,  careful  attention,  not  simply  from  teachers  and 
writers,  but  from  the  clergy  in  general,  from  all  in 
fact  who  are  interested  in  theology  whether  on 
scientific  or  on  practical  grounds. 

The  difficulty  is  a  double  one.  In  the  first  place, 
the  demand  that  historians  in  dealing  with  the 
thought  or  doctrine  of  the  Church  shall  be  dogma- 
ticians  instead  of  genuine  and  scientific  historians, 
and  the  common  tendency  on  the  part  of  historians 
themselves  to  yield  to  the  demand,  prevents  our 
obtaining  an  accurate  and  unprejudiced  knowledge 
of  the  past,  and  thus  defeats  the  very  end  of  history. 
In  the  second  place,  the  distortion  and  perversion 
of  the  past — which  results  all  unconsciously — de- 
prives the  theologian  of  that  light  and  guidance 
which  he  needs  in  order  that  he  may  be  able  to 
reach  the  truth  and  to  interpret  it  justly  and  ade- 
quately to  his  own  day  and  generation. 

Let  me  then  indicate  the  distinction  between 
History  and  Theology  which  I  have  in  mind,  and 
let  me  then  afterwards  call  attention  more  particu- 
larly to  the  advantages  which  may  be  expected  to 
flow  from  a  general  recognition  of  and  insistence 
upon  the  distinction. 


History  deals  solely  with  the  past  and  has  as  such 
no  concern  with  the  present  or  the  future.  The 
history  of  theology  has  as  its  object  not  to  discover 
and  understand  the  truth  of  God,  but  to  discover 
and  understand  the  thought  of  the  Christians  of  the 
past,  to  learn  what  they  have  believed  to  be  God's 
truth,  and  why  they  have  believed  it  such.  The 
historian  is  concerned  just  as  much  with  false  as 
with  true  beliefs.  In  fact  it  is  not  his  place  to 
pronounce  upon  the  truth  or  untruth  cff  any  opinion 
or  doctrine,  though  it  is  his  right  and  his  duty  to 
trace  its  origin  and  development  and  to  show,  if  he 
can,  its  effects  in  life  and  history.  Nothing  is  more 
incompatible  with  the  successful  prosecution  of 
historical  studies  than  the  feeling  that  the  historian 
must  pass  judgment  upon  the  persons  and  the 
movements  which  he  reviews,  and  try  them  by  his 
own  ethical  and  theological  standards,  or  by  the 
ethical  and  theological  standards  of  his  age.  In 
one  way,  to  be  sure,  the  historian  is  and  should  be 
a  judge  of  the  past.  It  is  his  business  to  be  not 
simply  an  annalist,  who  records  events  as  he  sees 
them,  but  an  intelligent  observer  of  the  gen- 
eral course  of  events,  of  the  connections  between 
them,  of  the  mutual  action  and  reaction  of  character 
upon  environment,  and  of  environment  upon  char- 
acter, and  of  the  causes  and  effects  of  the  inner  and 
outer  phenomena  which  he  studies.  And  such 
observation  will  inevitably  lead  him  to  test  men 
and  movements  by  their  own  standards;  to  show 
where  they  have  been  true  or  false  to  their  own 


principles,  and  to  trace  the  influences  external  and 
internal  which  have  in  any  way  controlled  or  modi- 
fied their  development.  Thus  to  let  the  persons 
and  movements  of  the  past  reveal  themselves, — 
thus  to  let  them  test  themselves, — is  a  part  of  the 
historian's  duty.  But  that  is  a  very  different  thing 
from  bringing  them  to  the  bar  of  the  present.  It 
is  not  the  historian's  concern  whether  they  are 
right  or  wrong,  but  it  is  his  concern  to  know  just 
what  their  development  has  been,  and  just  why  it 
has  been  thus,  when  perhaps  their  fundamental 
principle  seemed  to  demand  that  it  should  be  other- 
wise., And  so  the  historian  has  simply  to  observe 
and  to  report  the  past.  If  he  would  be  successful 
in  the  highest  sense,  he  must  have  profound  insight, 
which  enables  him  to  look  below  the  mere  surface 
of  events  at  the  moving  forces  which  lie  beneath 
them;  but  still  he  is  only  an  observer  and  re- 
porter. 

The  theologian  on  the  other  hand  attempts  to 
discover  the  truth  of  God  as  such,  that  he  may 
interpret  it  to  his  own  age.  He  is  not  primarily 
interested  in  the  conceptions  of  this  or  that  man  or 
period,  is  not  primarily  interested  to  know  what 
other  men  have  thought,  but  to  know  what  is  God's 
truth  for  the  age  in  which  he  lives.  The  formula- 
tions of  doctrine  in  the  past  have  no  significance 
to  him,  except  as  they  may  aid  him  in  his  search* 
for  divine  truth  and  in  his  formulation  of  a  correct 
doctrine  for  the  present.  He  may  study  the  past 
because  it  is  fitted  to  throw  light  on  the  present. 


8 

and  to  help  him  solve  his  great  problem;  he  must 
study  the  past  in  so  far  as  he  believes  it  to  contain 
authoritative  revelations  of  God  which  should 
control  or  form  the  basis  of  his  own  theology.  But 
even  so,  he  studies  other  ages  solely  for  the  sake 
of  the  present,  and  he  does  it  not  in  order  to  under- 
stand those  ages,  or  to  understand  the  opinions  and 
beliefs  of  other  men  and  other  times,  but  simply  to 
know  what  he  and  others  must  believe  to-day. 

You  say  at  once  that  theology  then  has  a  higher 
and  more  important  place  than  history?  To  dis- 
cover the  eternal  truth  of  God  and  to  interpret  it 
to  our  own  age  is  a  far  greater  and  more  useful 
thing  than  simply  to  learn  what  others  have  thought 
and  done  in  other  days  ?  I  freely  grant  that  this  is 
so.  But  I  maintain  nevertheless  that  history  has 
its  own  independent  and  indispensable  place.  It 
may  indeed  be  worth  little  to  know  the  beliefs  of 
other  men  unless  we  know  whether  they  are  true, 
or  unless  we  are  led  by  them  to  the  discovery  of 
the  eternal  truth  which  we  must  believe.  But  even 
so,  history  has  its  own  place  and  cannot  be  con- 
founded with  theology  without  serious  detriment 
to  the  latter  as  well  as  to  the  former. 

There  are  those  who  believe  that  the  study  of 
geology,  or  astronomy,  or  physics  is  valuable  only 
because  it  reveals  and  displays  more  clearly  the 
liand  of  God  in  nature,  and  thus  strengthens  the 
student's  religious  faith  and  clarifies  his  theological 
knowledge.  But  even  such  persons  would  not 
claim  that  geology  or  astronomy  or  physics  is 


identical  with  theology,  and  that  there  should  be 
no  geologists  or  astronomers  or  physicists,  but  only 
theologians.  Nor  would  they  claim  probably,  that 
if  a  work  on  geology  does  not  theologize  or  draw 
religious  conclusions  from  the  facts  of  nature,  it 
fails  to  fulfill  its  purpose  as  a  scientific  text  book 
or  treatise.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  even  such  persons 
would  probably  see  that  good  and  true  as  the 
religious  conclusions  may  be,  they  are  not  them- 
selves geology,  and  that  in  putting  them  in  his 
book,  the  author  becomes  for  the  moment  a  teacher 
of  religion  and  not  of  geology.  This  is  not  to  com- 
plain £t  all  of  the  religious  element.  It  may  be  a 
most  excellent  thing  to  have  it  in  the  book  and  in 
that  particular  book,  but  the  two  elements  must  be 
sharply  distinguished  or  misconceptions  will  in- 
evitably result  and  serious  mischief  follow.  And 
so  it  is  with  an  historical  work.  The  business  of 
such  a  work  is  to  deal  with  the  past  and  with  the 
past  exclusively.  If  it  be  a  history  of  politics  or  of 
war  or  of  morals  or  of  theology,  its  business  is  to 
recount  the  past;  not  to  discourse  upon  ideal  politics, 
or  upon  the  evils  of  war,  or  upon  the  proper  prin- 
ciples of  ethics  or  upon  eternal  truth  in  theology, 
but  to  reproduce  as  accurately  as  possible  the  pol- 
itics, wars,  morals  and  theology  of  other  days.  The 
historian  may  have  a  practical  purpose  in  dealing 
with  the  past.  He  may  desire  to  draw  lessons  from 
it  for  the  conduct  or  the  thinking  of  the  present,  but 
to  draw  such  lessons  is  not  to  write  history,  nor 
should  the  lessons  ever  be  confounded  with  the 


10 

history.  No  one  would  blame  an  historian  for  at- 
tempting to  draw  such  lessons  provided  he  realized 
himself,  and  made  it  clear  to  others,  that  in  doing 
so  he  was  acting  not  as  an  historian  but  as  a  practi- 
cal statesman,  or  moralist,  or  theologian.  But  on 
the  other  hand  no  one  could  say  that  a  man  was  not 
an  historian  because  he  refrained  from  drawing  such 
lessons  or  because  he  did  not  incorporate  them  in 
his  book.  And  indeed  experience  has  shown  that 
it  is  very  difficult  for  a  man  to  be  an  accurate  and 
impartial  historian  if  he  attempts  at  the  same  time 
to  describe  the  past  and  to  draw  lessons  from  it  for 
the  present.  The  needs  of  the  present  are  bound 
more  or  less  seriously  to  color  his  vision  of  the  past, 
and  it  is  almost  impossible  for  him  to  investigate 
objectively  and  impartially  and  to  reach  just  and 
accurate  results.  It  is  the  recognition  of  this  fact 
that  has  led  modern  historians  to  exclude  so  rigidly 
from  their  historical  works  the  reflections  and  prac- 
tical conclusions  which  formed  so  large  and  im- 
portant a  part  of  the  older  books  on  history.  By 
such  exclusion  it  is  believed  that  true  and  accurate 
knowledge  of  the  past  can  best  be  attained  and  im- 
parted to  others.  And  hence,  by  refraining  from 
assuming  the  attractive  and  tempting  role  of  the 
moralist  or  theologian,  the  historian  really  best 
serves  ethics  and  theology,  for  so  far  as  a  knowledge 
of  the  past  promotes  the  good  of  the  present,  a  true 
knowledge  of  it  must  be  more  helpful  and  more 
healthful  than  a  false.  And  the  accurate  knowledge 
which  the  historian  attains  by  pursuing  a  strictly 


II 

scientific  method  and  by  leaving  the  practical  bear- 
ing of  his  work  as  far  as  possible  out  of  sight,  the 
practical  teacher  may  then  make  use  of  with  a 
confidence  and  with  an  effect  impossible  under 
other  circumstances.  To  blame  an  historian,  then, 
because  he  does  not  draw  the  practical  conclusions 
which  might  be  drawn,  or  because  he  does  not  avow 
his  own  beliefs,  or  declare  his  own  attitude  toward 
the  events  which  he  narrates,  is  to  do  him  an  in- 
justice, and  more  than  that,  is  to  promote  the  very 
spirit  and  tendency  which  he  believes  and  which 
experience  has  shown  most  fatal  to  the  writing  of 
accurate  history,  and  thus  in  the  end  most  fatal  to 
the  learning  of  the  truest  and  most  helpful  lessons 
from  the  past. 

The  difficulty  upon  which  I  have  been  dwelling, 
of  confining  history  to  its  own  field,  and  of  keeping 
it  distinct  from  the  practical  conclusions  that  may 
be  drawn  from  it, — that  is,  in  the  sphere  of  religion, 
the  difficulty  of  keeping  history  and  theology  dis- 
tinct,— appears  over  and  over  again  in  connection 
with  every  period  in  the  life  of  the  Church;  in  con- 
nection, for  instance,  with  the  patristic  period,  dur- 
ing which  the  great  oecumenical  dogmas  were 
formulated;  in  connection  with  the  Reformation, 
when  those  evangelical  doctrines  which  constitute 
to-day  the  very  center  of  our  systems,  were  re- 
covered; but  above  all  in  connection  with  the  age 
of  Christ  and  his  apostles  when  the  Gospel  was 
preached  in  its  purity,  and  the  foundations  of  our 
faith  were  laid  for  all  time  to  come.  The  difficulty 


12 

of  drawing  the  necessary  distinction  is  greater  in 
that  age  than  in  any  other,  and  yet  nowhere  is  it 
so  important  that  the  distinction  should  be  sharply 
and  clearly  drawn.  As  we  believe  that  Christ  and 
His  apostles  uttered  an  immediate  revelation  of 
God,  and  as  we  regard  their  teaching  as  perma- 
nently normative  and  authoritative,  it  is  peculiarly 
difficult  to  deal  with  them  in  a  genuinely  historical 
way,  for  the  results  of  our  historical  investigations 
constitute  the  authoritative  material  of  our  dog- 
matics, and  we  can  scarcely  avoid  a  dogmatic  bias 
and  interest.  Moreover,  the  devout  reverence  with 
which  every  Christian  heart  regards  not  only  the 
divine  Master  but  also  His  chosen  apostles,  makes 
one  shrink  from  thinking  of  them  as  historical 
figures,  and  from  investigating  their  words  and 
works  as  one  investigates  the  words  and  works  of 
ordinary  uninspired  men.  And  yet,  no  one's  life 
or  words  or  works  can  be  understood,  not  even  the 
life  and  words  and  works  of  Christ  and  His  apos- 
tles, unless  He  is  studied  historically.  And  certainly 
nowhere  in  all  history  is  an  accurate  understanding 
more  important  than  just  here;  for  not  simply  our 
theology,  but  our  whole  faith  and  life  are  dependent 
upon  the  Lord  Christ  and  after  Him  upon  the  apos- 
tles, His  witnesses. 

It  has  always  been  a  temptation  to  study  Christ 
and  His  apostles  dogmatically  instead  of  histori- 
cally; to  go  to  them  not  with  the  desire  to  under- 
stand them  as  they  were,  but  with  the  desire  to 
have  our  own  beliefs  confirmed,  or  at  best  to  get 


13 

an  answer  from  them  as  to  the  truth  of  this  or  that 
element  in  our  systems.  And  so  men  have  been  all 
too  apt,  if  not  to  read  into  the  apostles'  teachings 
their  own  beliefs,  at  any  rate  to  construct  systems 
of  other  proportions  and  so  of  other  tendencies  than 
theirs.  But  if  we  would  be  historians  and  try  to 
understand  them,  we  must  divest  ourselves  tempor- 
arily, however  difficult  that  may  be,  of  the  theolog- 
ical attitude  of  mind,  must  forget  momentarily  that 
their  teachings  are  absolutely  authoritative,  that 
thus  we  may  study  them  without  undue  bias,  and 
may  not  be  tempted  to  force  upon  them  under  the 
pressure  of  our  own  theologies,  conceptions  which 
were  possibly  far  from  their  thought.  It  is  only  } 
after  we  have  honestly  and  conscientiously  tried  to  | 
do  this,  after  we  have  studied  them  in  the  purely 
historic  spirit,  that  we  or  others  are  prepared  to 
use  the  results  so  gained  in  shaping  the  theology 
of  our  own  age,  which  we  must  strive  always  to  .  /f  /f 
keep  in  true  conformity  with  the  theology  of  Christ 
and  His  apostles.  Thus  the  historical  method  in 
studying  the  Master  and  His  messengers  is  absolute- 
ly essential  as  a  basis  for  a  true  Christian  theology. 
We  must  first  be  historians  and  only  afterward 
theologians,  and  just  in  proportion  as  we  confound 
the  two  methods,  are  we  in  danger  of  misunderstand- 
ing those  whom  we  study,  and  making  our  theology 
something  else  than  truly  Christian.  Historians,  of 
course,  are  fallible  like  other  men,  and  they  make 
many  and  sometimes  serious  mistakes.  But  such 
mistakes  do  not  show  that  the  historical  method  is 


a  bad  thing.  They  show  only  that  the  historian 
has  not  used  the  method  rightly,  or  has  misunder- 
stood the  actual  results  secured.  And,  admitting 
all  the  mistakes,  the  longer  and  more  earnestly 
genuine  historical  study  is  carried  on,  the  nearer 
will  be  the  approximation  to  the  real  truth. 

Another  vital  distinction  between  history  and 
theology  appears  with  especial  clearness  in  con- 
nection with  the  study  of  the  earliest  days  of  the 
Church.  To  the  theologian  the  teaching  of  Christ 
and  His  apostles  is  normative  and  authoritative 
because  it  is  revealed  truth,  and  the  question  as  to 
how  the  truth  was  revealed  does  not  concern  him. 
It  is  divine  truth  however  and  whenever  the  knowl- 
edge of  it  was  imparted.  But  the  historian,  who 
is  not  looking  for  truth  which  must  be  believed 
to-day,  but  is  seeking  to  understand  Christ  and  His 
apostles,  cannot  rest  with  the  mere  knowledge  of 
what  they  believed  and  taught,  but  must  go  further 
back  and  ask  how  and  under  what  circumstances 
they  reached  their  beliefs,  and  how  and  under  what 
circumstances  they  imparted  them  to  others.  And 
hence,  it  is  his  duty  as  an  historian,  to  study  the 
environment  in  which  they  lived,  the  views  and 
the  tendencies  of  the  people  with  whom  they  came 
in  contact,  the  conceptions  of  the  nation  from  which 
they  sprang,  all  the  external  forces  and  influences 
which  acted  upon  them,  as  well  as  their  inner 
spiritual  experiences,  so  far  as  those  experiences 
can  be  traced.  This  is  not  because  the  historian 
does  not  believe  in  revelation,  or  because  he  does  not 


believe  in  the  divine  sonship  of  Christ  and  in  the 
inspiration  of  His  apostles,  but  because  he  wishes 
to  understand  them  and  can  understand  them  only 
as  he  traces  the  development  of  their  thought  and 
life — the  only  way  that  any  one  can  be  understood. 
Of  course,  if  it  be  denied  that  they  had  any  develop- 
ment, if  it  be  denied  that  they  felt  the  influence  of 
their  environment,  or  that  they  passed  through 
spiritual  experiences  which  left  their  impress  on 
their  life  and  thought,  the  historian  cannot  deal 
with  them  except  to  record  their  words  and  deeds. 
But  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  is  impossible  thus  to  put 
either  Christ  or  the  apostles  entirely  outside  the 
"pale  of  human  history.  That  Jesus  was  the  eternal 
Son  of  God — very  God  of  very  God — we  all  believe 
and  confess ;  and  that  His  apostles  were  His  inspired 
messengers  to  the  world  we  are  firmly  convinced. 
But  even  so,  the  New  Testament  records  them- 
selves tell  us  of  the  early  ignorance  and  the  gradual 
enlightenment  of  the  apostles;  of  the  difficulty 
which  the  Saviour  often  had  in  convincing  them 
of  the  truth  and  of  His  promise  to  give  them  larger 
knowledge  through  His  Spirit  after  His  departure. 
And  the  Gospel  tells  us  that  the  Master  himself 
grew  in  wisdom  as  well  as  in  stature.  And  so  the 
Christian  historian  endeavors  to  discover  the  in- 
fluences both  within  and  without,  which  contributed 
to  the  formation  of  their  conceptions,  and  to  trace 
the  development  of  those  conceptions  as  accurately 
as  possible.  But  such  a  course  does  not  mean 
at  all  that  he  questions  the  absolute  deity  of  the 


i6 

Lord,  or    that    he    doubts    the    inspiration    of    his 
apostles. 

What  is  revelation?  Is  it  necessarily  and  always 
a  mechanical  and  external  impartation  of  truth  for 
which  the  recipient  has  not  been  in  any  way  pre- 
pared by  his  previous  training  and  experience?  Or 
is  it  not  at  least  sometimes  such  an  influence  of 
God  upon  the  mind  and  heart  and  life  of  man  that 
he  is  led  to  see  and  understand  the  truth  that  God 
would  have  him  know?  Does  the  truth  cease  to 
be  revealed  truth  if  it  is  given  through  a  man's 
inspired  experience,  if  he  gains  it  by  the  inspired 
use  of  the  powers  which  God  has  given  him?  No 
thoughtful  Christian  can  well  think  such  a  thing. 
Must  God  act  immediately  and  without  the  use  of 
means,  or  not  at  all?  When  we  pray  and  our 
prayers  are  answered,  and  we  can  ourselves  trace 
the  secondary  causes  through  which  the  desired 
result  has  been  attained,  must  we  deny  that  God 
had  anything  to  do  with  it?  If  God  shall  bring 
good  out  of  the  evil  of  these  anxious  days  of  war, 
shall  we  refuse  to  praise  Him  because  forsooth  our 
army  and  our  navy  manfully  did  their  part?  Ah, 
no!  This  is  God's  world  in  which  we  live.  His 
are  its  forces.  His  its  laws;  and  shall  He  not  use 
His  own?  And  these  minds  and  hearts  of  ours  are 
not  they  also  from  God  and  shall  He  not  use  their 
powers  and  faculties  which  He  Himself  created  in 
communicating  with  the  children  whom  He  made? 
Can  He  not  teach  them  His  truth  and  will  by 
laying  His  hand  upon  their  lives  and  moulding  their 


spiritual  experiences?  It  is  difficult  to  understand 
how  any  one  can  suppose  that  to  trace  an  apostle's 
belief  back  to  his  Christian  experience  is  to  deny 
that  the  truths  which  he  teaches  were  revealed  to 
him  by  God.  Such  a  supposition  involves  an  in- 
credibly low  and  narrow  view  of  God's  dealings 
with  His  children. 

And  what  is  true  of  the  apostles  is  true  in  even 
larger  measure  and  in  a  unique  way  of  Christ.  For 
He  is  Himself  God,  and  it  is  not  that  another  being 
reveals  truth  to  Him,  but  that  His  own  divine  nature 
so  controls  the  experiences  of  His  life  that  His  human 
mind  and  heart  learns  from  those  experiences,  learns 
out  of  the  fullness  of  His  own  divine-human  con- 
sciousness the  truth  of  God  as  no  one  else  could 
learn  it.  It  is  not  necessary  to  suppose  that  all  the 
laws  of  human  nature  were  done  away  in  Christ 
because  He  was  God  as  well  as  man.  Only  a 
docetist  could  deny  that  He  had  a  human  mind, 
human  perceptive  powers,  human  memory,  reflec- 
tion, judgment,  reason ;  and  if  He  had  all  these  human 
faculties,  He  must  have  used  them  and  must  have 
gained  His  knowledge  through  them — must  have 
learned  divine  lessons  day  by  day  under  the  in- 
struction of  His  own  divine-human  experience.  Is 
any  higher  or  purer  source  of  knowledge  conceiv- 
able than  the  experience  of  the  God-man?  And 
could  experience  and  wisdom  gained  thus  be  any- 
thing else  than  divine?  And  so,  if  the  historian, 
who  studies  the  teaching  of  the  apostles,  would  be 
true  to  his  calling,  he  must  trace  their  teaching 


i8 

back  to  the  experiences  of  their  Christian  life,  of 
their  life  inspired  by  its  contact  with  the  divine 
Master  Himself  and  by  the  indwelling  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  after  His  ascension;  and  similarly  in  studying 
the  teachings  of  Christ,  he  must  trace  them  back 
so  far  as  he  can  to  the  inspired  life  of  the  God-man. 
And  that  the  historian  should  thus  seek  to  trace 
the  development  of  the  revelation  of  God  through 
the  divine  Saviour  Christ  and  through  His  apostles, 
is  not  because  of  curiosity  merely,  not  because  of 
his  desire  to  fathom  secrets  which  concern  neither 
him  nor  his  fellows.  Indeed  in  no  way  can  he 
render  greater  service  to  the  theologian  and  through 
him  to  the  Church,  than  by  just  such  reverent  and 
careful  search.  For  though  to  the  theologian, 
who  wishes  to  know  simply  what  we  must  now 
believe,  the  important  thing  is  not  how  the  revela- 
tion came,  but  what  it  was,  nevertheless  a  knowl- 
edge of  how  and  when  it  was  given  (if  such  a 
knowledge  be  possible)  will  greatly  aid  him  in 
discovering  its  true  meaning.  Everybody  admits 
that  many  a  text  of  Scripture,  or  parable  of  Christ, 
or  statement  of  an  apostle,  cannot  be  fully  under- 
stood and  appreciated  until  something  is  known  of 
the  context  or  of  the  circumstances  under  which  the 
words  were  uttered;  and  it  is  equally  true  that  the 
truth  revealed  by  Christ,  and  by  the  Spirit  through 
the  apostles,  can  be  fully  understood  only  when 
its  relation  to  their  own  life  and  experience  is 
known  at  least  in  part.  Could  we  enter  more 
deeply  than  we  can,  with  the  ignorance  and  weak- 


19 

ness  of  our  sin-darkened  minds,  into  the  secret 
recesses  of  the  divine  Saviour's  inner  life,  much 
that  is  now  dark  to  us  would  doubtless  be  plain, 
and  many  of  His  words  would  glow  before  our 
enlightened  eyes  with  even  a  more  glorious  radiance 
than  they  now  possess. 

Thus  the  ultimate  fruit  of  a  truly  historical  study 
of  Christ  and  His  apostles  should  be  a  clarification 
of  the  theologian's  vision,  and  he  should  be  able, 
because  of  it,  to  give  to  the  world  a  truer  and  more 
adequate  theology.  Not  necessarily  that  his  theol- 
ogy will  contain  doctrines  which  he  never  held 
before^  and  that  doctrines  which  be  once  believed 
will  disappear  from  his  system,  but  that  all  his 
theology  will  be  more  accurately  squared  to  that 
of  Christ  and  His  apostles,  will  bear  more  nearly 
the  proportions  of  their  thinking  (for  proportion  is 
after  all  one  of  the  chief  differences  between  theol- 
ogies), will  emphasize  what  they  emphasized  and 
will  be  based  upon  and  take  its  meaning  from  the  '  ' 
same  vital  principle  around  which  their  thought  ' 
centered.  And  this  is  not  simply  a  supposition  as 
to  what  might  be  or  will  be,  but  it  is  to  a  large 
extent  already  a  realized  fact.  Why  is  it  that  in 
these  modern  days  the  Church  is  increasingly  em- 
phasizing- the  great  ethical  and  religious  principles 
which  were  the  moving  power  in  the  lifq  and  work 
of  Christ  and  His  apostles?  It  is  largely  because 
of  the  immense  emphasis  which  has  been  laid 
during  the  last  forty  years  upon  the  historical  study 
of  the  Lord  Himself  and  of  His  early  disciples. 


20 

There  has  never  been  an  age  since  the  days  of  the 
apostles  when  Jesus  Christ  was  so  well  known,  and 
the  vital  and  eternal  significance  of  His  life  and  of 
His  teaching  so  widely  and  profoundly  appreciated 
as  now.  From  the  second  century  on  He  has  been, 
except  for  rare  and  beautiful  intervals  (which  mark 
the  history  of  the  Church  like  oases  in  the  desert) 
little  more  than  a  vague  and  abstract  figure — the 
divine  Logos,  the  incarnation  of  the  Son  of  God, 
one  person  in  two  natures,  the  atoning  Lamb  of 
God — all  of  which  He  truly  is  but  none  of  which 
expresses  all  He  is.  In  the  age  of  St.  Bernard  and 
the  Crusades,  in  the  age  of  Peter  Waldo  and 
St.  Francis  of  Assisi,  in  the  age  of  Luther  and  the 
other  Reformers  Jesus  was  recovered  in  the 
beauty  and  loveliness  of  His  divine  manhood,  as  He 
walked  the  hills  and  vales  of  Palestine,  teaching 
divine  wisdom  and  performing  mighty  works,  as  He 
suffered  and  died  for  the  sins  of  the  world,  as  He 
rose  victorious  over  death  and  the  grave,  and 
ascended  into  heaven  in  all  the  fullness  of  His  per- 
sonal life.  And  the  recovery  of  the  Lord,  whose 
gure  had  been  so  largely  hidden  by  philosophy, 
y  Mariolatry,  by  sacramentaflanism,  meant  in  every 
case  a  revival  of  religion  which  swept  the  Christian 
world.  We  know  what  the  Reformation  was;  we 
hardly  know  perhaps  how  much  those  great  revivals 
meant  which  followed  upon  the  preaching  of  St. 
Bernard  and  of  St.  Francis.  History  has  borne 
repeated  witness  to  the  revivifying  power  of  the 
historic  figure  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  it  will  bear  such 


21 

witness  again  when  the   new   enthusiasm  for  that 

august  and  holy  and  tender  and  divine  man  shall 

clear  away  entirely  the  mists  of  scholasticism  Un3  \n/[lA  A 

of  mysticism  Iwhich  have  too  often  and  to  widely    »W 

dimmed    and     obscured     the    world's    vision    of 

Him. 

I  am  not  speaking  vain  or  random  words.  I 
verily  believe,  that  standing  on  the  threshold  of  the 
new  century  we  are  upon  the  eve  of  one  of  the 
greatest  and  most  profound  religious  revivals  the 
world  has  seen,  for  it  is  Christ  Himself,  the  historic 
Christ  who  lived  and  labored  and  died,  the  ever- 
living  Christ  who  came  forth  from  the  tomb  and  is 
now  at  the  right  hand  of  the  Father, — it  is  the  Lord 
Christ  Himself  who  through  the  Spirit  controls  and 
moves  the  Church  and  the  world.  And  there  is  no 
doubt  that  Jesus  Christ,  the  concrete,  individual, 
personal  Christ,  is  more  thought  about  and  talked 
about  to-day,  and  is  more  widely  and  more  fully 
understood  than  ever  before  since  apostolic  days. 
Through  all  the  centuries  and  until  our  own  day, 
lives  of  Christ,  books  about  Christ,  tales  laid  in  the 
time  of  Christ,  were  the  rarest  kind  of  literature, 
and  as  for  any  interest  in  the  actual  concurrences 
of  His  daily  life  and  in  the  real  development  of  His 
character,  except  at  certain  periods,  there  was  none 
at  all.  But  to-day  the  press  is  pouring  forth  books 
of  all  sorts,  dealing  in  one  way  or  another  with  the 
life  and  times  of  Jesus — good  books,  bad  books  and 
indifferent  books ;  and  the  recovery  of  a  mere  frag- 
ment of  papyrus,  purporting  to  contain  hitherto 


22 


unknown  utterances  of  our  Lord,  and  the  publica- 
tion of  other  even  less  authentic  documents,  is  suffi- 
cient to  throw  the  whole  world  into  a  fever  of  ex- 
citement. We  may  not  like  all  the  books  that  have 
been  written, — some  of  them  no  reverent  man  could 
like,  —but  they  are  all,  whatever  their  tone  and 
their  quality,  symptomatic  of  a  profound  and  uni- 
versal interest  in  Jesus  Christ,  which  has  been 
fostered  in  no  small  degree  by  the  historical  enthu- 
siasm and  investigations  of  the  last  few  decades, 
and  which  cannot  help  but  produce  tremendous 
effects  in  days  to  come.  For  if  Christ  but  be 
known,  the  human  heart  must  ultimately  own  Him 
as  its  Lord. 

There  is  much  more  that  I  should  have  liked  to 
say  upon  my  general  subject  of  the  distinction 
between  History  and  Theology,  but  I  have  already 
trespassed  too  long  upon  your  patience,  and  there 
is  perhaps  no  better  point  at  which  to  close  than  just 
here,  with  the  utterance  of  my  profound  conviction 
that  the  historical  study  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ, 
which  is  really  only  in  its  infancy,  but  which  is 
pursued  to-day  in  all  parts  of  Christendom  with  a 
new  zeal  and  with  a  devotion  and  a  purity  of  pur- 
pose that  have  never  been  surpassed,  in  spite  of  all 
mistakes  and  errors,  is  bound  to  hasten  the  coming 
of  His  blessed  kingdom,  the  coming  of  the  time 
when  all  the  world  shall  know  and  love  and  serve 
the  God  of  Hosts  and  His  Son  Jesus  Christ,  our 
Divine  Master  and  Saviour  and  Lord. 


<i 


.N^.  Y 

/•-QURTH 

JTH     DAY 


-2^W 


LD  21-100»i-12,  '43  (8796s) 


Gaylamount 
Pamphlet 

Binder 
Gaylord  Bros..  Inc. 

Stockton,  Calif. 
"-M.  Reg.  U.S.  Pat.  Off. 


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